PARCA, USA, April 14, 2014 - The PACS Administrators Registry and Certification Association (PARCA) announced today that it is updating its certification exams.

With the updates in exams, the organization is also streamlining the continuing education requirements for maintaining certification.The new exam requirements will be posted on the PARCA website by May 1, 2014 and the new exams will go into effect Aug. 1, 2014. To reflect updates, the certifications will now add the update year to the certification.

Those certifications will now be CPAS2104, CPSA2014, and CPIA2014. The certification exams being updated include CPAS (Certified PACS Associate), CPSA (Certified PACS System Analyst), and CPIA (Certified PACS Interface Analyst).

These exams will continue to be updated every three years. Taking the updated exams every three years will replace previous requirements for members to submit 60 hours of continuing education and to re-take the exam every 5 years to maintain certification.

The organization of professionals who manage image archiving and communications systems for medical centers, hospitals and other health care organizations said the updates address changes in technology that have occurred since 2005 when the exams were first written.

“To date, reporting of continuing education by PARCA members has been extremely limited. At the same time, the technology that supports healthcare informatics has changed by leaps and bounds.

These changes demand that PARCA revises and updates the technical requirements for certification and modify our testing to reflect these new requirements.”

About PARCA

PARCA is an international, USA-based non-profit organization, providing qualified certification programs for health care imaging and IT professionals in the PACS and EMR field. Its board of directors has representation from the USA, Canada, Australia and Singapore.